


A sea was storming inside of me

by feyrelay



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Casual Sex, Character Study, Getting Together, Jealousy, M/M, Marvel Fans 4 BLM 2020, Miscommunication, Non-Endgame Tony Stark/James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Non-Endgame Tony Stark/Sam Wilson (Marvel), POV Character of Color, POV James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Physical Disability, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, pre-relationship Tony Stark/Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:21:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29113695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: Four people, four permutations. A character study through sex, some casual, some very much not so.or, the team gets back together because Sam and Rhodey care enough to make them, while Tony and Peter do a highly inappropriate dance around each other. That's it, that's the fic.CNTW = Peter is underage but the Starker is strictly pre-relationship. POV Rhodey, so the Sam/Tony is off-screen. Endgame Sam/Rhodey and pre-Tony/Peter, featuring erstwhile Tony/Rhodey.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Sam Wilson, James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Parker/Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Sam Wilson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLink/gifts).



> This fic was written for my bidder from the Marvel Fans 4 BLM auction and if you think anything herein might offend you, I invite you to gently caress that back button.

After Siberia, Tony is as bad as Rhodey’s ever seen him. Bearing in mind, now, that Rhodey has seen Tony through the nineties and all the losses—Maria, Jarvis, and Howard in that order of importance—and all the gains—mostly bad habits, Happy, and Pepper—that that decade had entailed.

And it pisses him off that this should be worse than that, in some ways.

Rhodey’s pissed off at Steve, sure, because that was some bullshit, 2v1 in the snow and ice and secrecy. They hadn’t killed Tony, no, but they sure as shit hadn’t made sure he’d make it out of Siberia alive, either. And the kid? Okay, sure, the kid made it 2v2 _technically,_ but Peter Parker stowing away on the jet to the HYDRA base—and here Rhodey uses a direct quote—because he “thought about” Tony going alone and had been worried, well.

There’s a lot to unpack there. Not least of which is how a teenager shouldn’t be ‘thinking about’ Tony that hard, in a way that inspired him to risk both his secret identity and his life. But there’s also the part about how Steve and Barnes hadn’t known Peter would show up until the moment he did, near the end of the fight, to hear Tony tell it.

Rhodey also has concerns about how Tony had frozen, just absolutely fucking frozen stock-still, the moment Barnes had so much as circled his hands around the spider-kid’s throat.

(More than that, though, Rhodey has concerns about how he had to get _that_ little detail from an encrypted text message from Sam Wilson. Apparently, the fear in Tony’s eyes and the sight of his own metal arm choking the kid had fucked up Barnes something fierce, and Sam’s been playing team therapist, which Rhodey also has thoughts about.)

So yes, Rhodey’s worried, pissed off, concerned, and suspicious in near-equal measure, except for how he doesn’t get to be pissed off. They barely allow queer men in the military, much less queer, black men with anti-establishment best friends and more engineering background than anyone knows what to do with and a code that he won’t compromise, not for anything. Can’t have him getting Angry, too. And that’s Angry with a capital A, just like in African and American.

Most of all, above all of that, Rhodey hurts. He hurts because he’s always been the one everyone leans on, the one keeping Tony upright and the one keeping the team together, despite the fact that it took years for him to even be considered a member of it. Every time someone mentions the ‘original six’ Avengers, Rhodey wants to break something but he can’t because that would be Angry of him.

So he keeps on hurting, because people need him and now is not the time to be going off half-cocked. He can be strong. He can be strong for Tony after losing Steve and Pepper, and he can be the person Sam and Nat come crawling back to when they realize that Steve and Barnes (and Wanda and Vision) are probably just doing this so they can play house. Rhodey might even, if Happy doesn’t beat him to it, turn on the mentorly charm and give the Parker boy a second option before Tony royally crosses some wires in the kid’s head with his lack of boundaries.

Rhodey can do all that, because he’s a goddamn superhero, and he has to.

Even if _he’s_ the one who fell hundreds of feet and can’t move his fucking legs.

(Even if he cries sometimes between morphine drips.)

***

He’s not sure what he likes more… when people visit or when they don’t.

On the one hand, one of the nurses is extremely good-looking. He has lighter brown eyes than Rhodey’s own, and muscle. He’s not a physical therapist, but he does take the time to help Rhodey get some blood in his legs, gently lifting at Rhodey’s foot and helping him bicycle the limb for a minute or so before switching to the other one. All this, so that the floor of the hospital isn’t so cold when the nurse—Julien—helps Rhodey to the bathroom.

It’s the sort of kindness and consideration that aches, from this side of it. Rhodey never really knew that before. He’s usually the one taking care of people, not being taken care of.

Now, though, he understands that this is the kind of thing that makes people want. If Julien the nurse ever touched him in a way not strictly related to his care, Rhodey sure as hell wouldn’t be mad about it.

And people who he knows a little bit more—well not more _intimately,_ there’s nothing much more intimate than the kind of assistance Rhodey needs from the nursing staff right now—but certainly there are people who Rhodey has known for longer, who visit him as well. His sister comes right away and the simple comfort of family is just what he needs at that moment. Pepper sends flowers, though she keeps her distance in deference to Tony and his so-called claim over Rhodey, after the power couple’s high-profile breakup.

Rhodey’s not sure how he feels about being something that can be claimed, but the pain is too all-encompassing most of the time, even with the drugs, to worry about it too much.

But it’s tiring too, trying to keep it together. And when Rhodey’s alone, he can look through his phone and the messages that Wilson keeps sending him. The very first one had been an apology, of course it had been; the only ones who feel as responsible as Sam does for what happened to Rhodey are Tony and Vision themselves.

The next few texts had been about Siberia.

The rest, though, since then? Mostly Sam bitches and moans about the food on the run, about Steve and his new pet cyborg, about the smell of Natasha bleaching her hair. It’s tantamount to treason, the way Sam tells Rhodey plenty of identifying information about the movements of the Rogue Avengers—which is what the media are calling them—like it’s nothing. Sam lets these things slip like it’s no big deal, like he can trust Rhodey not to go running to State… or to Tony like a pet lapdog.

Sam acts like maybe Rhodey’s duty to everyone but himself isn’t the most important thing in the world. It’s a real breath of fresh air. 

Every text Rhodey gets, no matter the time of day or night, makes the moment that he unencrypts and reads it better, by miles and miles, leagues and leagues, knots and knots.

( _By land, by sea, by air,_ Rhodey quotes ruefully in his mind. Rehab is its own kind of war.)

The only thing Sam’s texts can’t help with is the touch-starvation.

***

The feeling only gets more acute the next time Tony visits him. Rhodey has to sit there and watch, all throughout their conversation on the topic of what to do now, on what the concept of the Avengers as a team is even going to be, after everything. He has to sit there and watch as the kid—whom Tony has brought along—listens too attentively, nods too eagerly, tucks himself into a hospital chair and falls asleep too quickly… curled as he is ever so slightly towards Tony’s side.

“Do a friend a favor and help me shower so I don’t embarrass myself with the nurses?” Rhodey asks, after a few quiet moments have passed. Tony obliges him right away, and something sick and hot curls in Rhodey’s stomach like guilt.

Not that he has anything to be guilty about, but it’s just an empathy thing. He can see how guilt guides Tony’s hand, so he feels it too. It’s always been that way and it’s unfair as hell, but that’s nothing new either.

Rhodey gets himself sat down on the shower seat inside the little cubicle shower built into the hospital bathroom. It's tiny, but he feels every inch of the luxury that a combination of military clout and Tony's money has bought him. Being an Avenger has its perks, and the compound is a godsend.

Of course, then again, if he weren't an Avenger he wouldn't need to be here at all. 

_And that's the crux of it, isn't it?_ Rhodey thinks as he plucks awkwardly at the ties of his hospital gown, getting the stupid thing off. He's made a lot of choices in his life, some of them so long ago and so deeply felt that they don't feel like choices at all anymore but just part of him, innate: joining JROTC and then ROTC and then the Air Force, befriending the sad little rich white boy who talked to the television in their dorm commons, pressing said pasty idiot against the door of said dorm—two years later—for the most frightening kiss of either of their lives. Those kinds of things. He never had a choice about that, it feels like.

And it's not that Rhodey wants applause for any of those choices. He doesn't want applause for anything. He doesn't want anything for free and he wants very little for cheap besides coffee, beer, and the occasional cigarette for nostalgia's sake; stuff like that reminds him of the weekend after basic training.

He's never felt like he needed to be rewarded for anything, is what Rhodey means to express. He's not _entitled_ to a reward.

(But on the flip side, it sure would be nice to stop being punished.)

The sight of Tony half-undressed shakes Rhodey from his thoughts.

"What are you doing?"

Tony stops with his hands on his belt. "You asked for help in the shower? I don't have other clothes if these get wet. I, uh. I've been staying in Manhattan while Pepper moves off the compound."

 _Oh._ Well, okay then. "So that's _over_ over?" 

"Ding dong, my relationship's dead," Tony sing-songs, low and without enthusiasm. He strips out of the rest of his clothes.

"It's been over over before."

"Yeah, well. 'Never again' is what she said,'' Tony explains.

 _Never say never,_ Rhodey thinks. He and Tony, in fact, have said _never again_ before, to things like being naked in the shower together. And yet here they are.

Tony curls himself into the scant space on the shower floor between Rhodey’s little seat and the wall with all the faucetry. He looks so small there, Rhodey thinks, with his knees up like he’s bashful, like he thinks somehow—ridiculously, to Rhodey’s mind—that _his_ nakedness and not Rhodey’s own on top of his humiliating incapacity right now, is the star of the current show.

 _You’re too used to being the center of attention,_ Rhodey decides not to say. And then, smaller and even further down, he thinks, _What about me, asshole?_

He reaches forward and grabs for the handheld showerhead, passing it down to Tony, who angles it away and turns on the water, giving it time to heat up. “Sorry about Pep,” Rhodey says belatedly.

“It is what it is,” Tony deflects, then sprays Rhodey’s numb feet with the showerhead, taking first one sole and then the other in his palm, to wash in-between Rhodey’s toes. 

It’s very tender of him, vaguely sexual even. Or maybe it’s just the shock of being touched by someone who isn’t a nurse; Rhodey can’t tell. Maybe his heart is as numb as his toes, after the shock of everything that has happened. He doesn’t say anything, just sighs, tilting his head back.

“Feel good?”

“Feels great,” Rhodey’s big enough to admit. “I gotta get out of here, man. S’lonely, no matter how hot Nurse Julien is.”

Tony looks thoughtful as he gently washes Rhodey’s legs… too thoughtful. Here comes an avalanche of bullshit, Rhodey figures. “Is that the one that looks like me, but bigger and goofier? Like the Great Dane version of me?”

 _This idiot,_ Rhodey thinks, until it’s all fondness and warmth diffusing through him as steam envelops them both. “I guess you could put it that way. I mean, _I_ wouldn’t but _you_ can. Twerp.”

Tony hands him the showerhead by feel—it’s not that steamy but Rhodey notes that Tony’s looking resolutely down, head bowed—and the spray of warm water gets him right in the ball of seized muscle on his thigh that the doctors seem most concerned about. Rhodey moans and Tony looks up, quick.

“You okay?” he asks, even as the tickle of warmth continues sluicing over Rhodey’s skin, getting just close enough to his dick to be a tease.

“Yeah, a little too okay.” He tries to take the showerhead the rest of the way from Tony’s hands but Tony’s grip suddenly tightens.

“Oh really, Rhodes?”

He aims the spray more directly, still being careful, and Rhodey tips his head back. It’s not the best thing he’s ever felt, but it’s warm and wet and more than he’s been able to safely feel for weeks. And Tony’s eyes are on him, that’s the other thing; there was a time in Rhodey’s life when all he wanted was to have Tony’s eyes on him and he had thought he’d outgrown that.

Apparently not.

That’s why he doesn’t fight it when Tony finally lets him take the showerhead. He’s half-relieved and half-disappointed, thinking things are gonna ramp back down now, but then Rhodey hisses; it seems he’s only been given reign of the showerhead so that Tony has his hands free to gently cup and lift Rhodey’s balls.

Lord. Put that on the list of late-80s experiences he hadn’t expected to repeat any time soon.

Tony is just putting his left hand under Rhodey’s sack as his right curls around the hardening length of Rhodey’s cock, and Rhodey thinks, _I could still stop this._ It’s all-consuming, paralyzing. This feels important, like maybe it’s not just doing a friend a favor, not just a friendly little throwback exercise.

“Tones? Are we good?”

Tony continues gripping him, not stroking yet, just holding them both there in the moment. “I mean. You say ‘stop’ and I’ll stop, but yeah. As far as I’m concerned, we’re good.”

Somewhat nervously, Rhodey irons the heels of his hands down the jumping muscles in his thighs. It hurts a little, how much he needs to be touched, how much he wants to fuck forward, further into Tony’s grip, or—God forbid—that always-on mouth. Hurting, though, is a little better than the numb, dead feeling from when he first fell, so.

“Okay,” he breathes.

Tony pumps him a few times, tight and fast like he’s always liked, and Rhodey leans into how dry and friction-y it is, even with the warm water. He’s still chasing that tingly little hurt feeling like maybe his body still thinks it’s owed more pain from the fall, instead of the sudden, spine-cracking, adrenaline-fueled nothingness that he’d actually gotten.

Still, he needs more than that to get off, and Rhodey is just about to suggest they make some extremely dubious use of the cheap conditioner, if only to ease Tony’s hand, when Tony blows past that altogether and takes Rhodey’s cock in his mouth.

“Fuck!” Rhodey manages to not-shout, but only just barely. The sound echoes around in the small bathroom.

The slight slurping sound of Tony pulling off does too. “Shuddup, the kid’ll hear you.”

“Don’t be telling me what to do when my dick’s supposed to be in your mouth, man. And _definitely_ don’t be talking about the kid.”

Tony grins at him, both wolfish and hazy through the surrounding steam. Then he gets back to it and Rhodey stops noticing anything except how good it feels to be warm and alive and taken care of. He gets his free hand into hair that is greyer than the last time they did this, sure, but still silky even in the sticky damp of the shower. Tony’s always been good at this, even at nineteen, and better still at twenty-one. Forty-six shows no signs of bucking the trend, and Rhodey sinks into the feeling of Tony swallowing him down, over and over. “Shit.”

He’s well-endowed enough that Tony only goes about three-quarters of the way down; he’s out of practice if he’s been faithful to Pepper and Rhodey has no reason to believe that that’s anything but true. Still, Tony’s not so rusty that he forgets to put his tongue to use, and Rhodey’s blood warms and thumps in his veins as Tony does something that causes the smooth, slick press of the inside of his mouth to get tighter, swirlier— fuck. Just _better._

Rhodey can’t think like this, not that he needs to. But he forces his hand in Tony’s hair to relax, resisting the urge to just fuck his oldest friend’s mouth like there’s no tomorrow. He has _manners._ He can make this good for Tony too.

“You’re doing good, Tones. You got this,” he tries to soothe, and Tony makes some kind of noise that isn’t a cough but also isn’t _not_ a cough, and pulls back.

He rests his head briefly against Rhodey’s thigh, breathing there, even though he doesn’t stop the tight pull of his fist up and down Rhodey’s cock. It’s distracting in the best way.

Rhodey takes a deep breath and tries to focus up—something’s wrong—but Tony beats him to the punch.

“I’m sorry,” Tony gets out, voice creaking a little.

 _Shit, no. Nuh-uh. Not happening._ “Stop it, okay, you don’t have to be sorry,” Rhodey tells him.

“I let you fall,” Tony says into Rhodey’s thigh, and his pale, pale shoulders shake a little.

“No, gravity let me fall. Man, you gotta- listen. Listen to me, Tony. If you wanna help me? Don’t make this about you.”

Tony looks up at him. The slant of his mouth is plush and wet and miserable. “Can’t even blow you right. Some genius I am, being outdone by dropout hookers the world over.”

And it’s so like him, Rhodey would laugh if he didn’t know Tony would think he was laughing _at_ him. “I’m gonna help you help me,” he tells him instead. “Okay? You just have to be good, take a few orders. Number one, stop beating yourself up and throw those apologetic energies into a little body worship, if you know what I mean.”

“Never have been good at taking orders,” Tony quips, pushing wet hair back from his face. It makes him look younger, in Rhodey’s informed opinion. “But body worship sounds good.” He rubs his cheek over the drooling head of Rhodey’s dick, the tip pushing just slightly at the soft hollow under Tony’s cheekbone. It shouldn’t be hot, but it is, because it’s them. Everything remotely sexual Rhodey's ever seen Tony do in front of him was either hot or stupid or both. Mostly both.

"Do you remember that time," Rhodey starts, interrupting himself to sigh as Tony dips his head back down and takes him back in, "that you had a zit before your Advanced Engineering presentation and you asked me to come on your face because some coked-out sorority girl told you it would help?"

Tony chokes a little, laughing around Rhodey's dick in a way that flutters and squeezes deliciously. And maybe Rhodey should be ashamed of how good it feels, that he's getting this even though Tony's not really getting his own out of it, even though he knows they're not going to fuck and they're _definitely_ not getting back together, not after all these years. Maybe he should be embarrassed at how his ass cheeks are tingling with the urge to flex and go deeper down Tony's throat as it relaxes around him, at how close he is already.

But it's nice to be taken care of, and it's nice to feel safe, to feel so important that he can have New York's Most (Recently) Eligible Bachelor on his knees for him like this, with said bachelor looking a little closer to blissed-out on every bob down and with every timed swallow.

"You've learned some tricks since then, huh? Like deep-throating?" he teases Tony, who's still a little twerp and completely deserves it.

Tony communicates the only way he can, humming a little moan of assent, and Rhodey can't take it anymore. 

He pushes through his inability as best he can, using his arms, and scoots forward on the shower seat so he can spread his legs more and get Tony in closer and tighter. He gets his right hand more securely threaded through all that thick, mostly dark hair and holds Tony's head still. The push forward to well and truly fuck his throat is so easy, and they both make noises of pure pleasure.

Tony just takes it, eyes closing in supplicant acceptance, and sneaks one of his hands to curl around Rhodey's wrist where he's being held. 

He looks so good like this and Rhodey intends to tell him so. "Look at you, Tones. A natural. Come on," he says as he withdraws just slightly and Tony sucks in a shallow breath, "you got this. You got this and I got you." He tightens his grip and thrusts back into Tony's hot mouth. He's barely able to keep from spraying him in the face with the showerhead, but in the end Rhodey multitasks admirably and aims the warm water over Tony's scalp and back.

Tony moans again, making use of what little space they have to spread his legs.

“There you go, baby, nice and warm,” Rhodey exhales, really getting into it as he slickly fucks back in and out. “Touch yourself for me while I get myself off with this mouth and I’ll wash your hair after.”

And Tony always has enjoyed a bit of petting, even in the shower, so he drops his jaw as expected and just lets Rhodey manhandle him, which Rhodey is more than fine with. 

After a few moments of that, it’s a quick thing for both of them, Tony presumably getting off on helping and being of service, on the idea that every time his throat catches around the head of Rhodey’s cock that he’s that much closer to absolution. For Rhodey’s part, his orgasm is coming up from his toes, which he can actually feel right now, in the heat and steam and abandon that he’s being overwhelmed with. Right before it comes up to meet him, Tony’s head jerks in his hand and he gives a tell-tale groan around his mouthful and Rhodey feels smugly satisfied for outlasting him.

That smugness manifests as a sharp jerk of his wrist as he yanks Tony back from swallowing and comes instead all over that billion-dollar face, whose lashes flutter as Tony says, “Oh god,” and lets him.

“Fuck,” says Rhodey eloquently, when he’s finished and leaning forward over his knees. His limbs are melting into themselves and the world is buttery smooth.

Tony wipes at his face and promptly wipes his hand on Rhodey’s arm. “You’re a dick, honeybear. But one, I missed being gay, and two, what a dick it is.”

 _You’re bi, not gay— and you don’t stop being bi when you’re with— whatever,_ Rhodey decides not to say. Words don’t really seem worth it, and instead he just absently hits Tony in the face with the water. Eventually, they get all the jizz off everything, and Rhodey washes the little twerp’s hair like they’re back at the dorm. His own doesn’t need it, so they make quick work of the rest of the shower, both aware of how long it’s been already.

A bit sadly, Rhodey has to remain seated to towel himself off, but worse than that is watching Tony put his layers of armor back on—pants and belt, yes, but also undershirt, dress shirt, vest, and tie. It’s only then that Rhodey notes how Tony dressed up to, what? Come see him in the medical compound? It makes him wonder what Tony thought he needed to be guarded against.

There’s nothing to be done for Tony’s hair, and Rhodey just has his hospital clothes, so while Tony slips his last defense on—tinted glasses—they go out to face the so-called music, only to find that the room is empty.

“Well at least he has tact, if not sense,” Tony says flatly, and throws himself back into his visitor’s chair as Rhodey creaks back into bed, feeling both better and worse than he has in days.

Tony stays for a while and Rhodey is surprised to be treated to dinner—hospital food, but still—and a show, the show being Tony in a nostalgic, almost maudlin mood. They reminisce about MIT and when a _Supernanny_ re-run comes on, they talk about Coulson and Hammer and Vanko for the first time in a long, long time. “I missed you,” Rhodey gets out, in a quiet moment. “Especially these past few years when you and Pepper got so busy trying to take over the world.”

“It’s her world, I just live in it,” Tony says flippantly, but then he quiets too. Rhodey notes that he has looked out the window towards the main compound no less than four times in the past ten minutes, and he wonders what Tony is seeing: Pepper Potts, gone, or Peter Parker, waiting?

“Hmmm.”

“I missed you too,” Tony tells him and that’s good enough for now, or would be if that’s where it stopped. “You were always so busy training with Sam, for all the good it is now.”

It’s so transparent that Rhodey almost sighs. And this is why they broke up. This jealousy thing, this need to be seen and acknowledged… it hadn’t exactly meshed well with the whole DADT situation, at the time. “We have a lot in common,” Rhodey replies neutrally. “He’s a good listener and he gets what sort of headspace I’m in, a lot of the time. You’d do well to find someone like that for yourself. It could still _be_ good, man, if you and Steve will let it.”

Tony looks out to the main compound again and this time Rhodey suggests he should go.

(To his surprise, Tony even takes him up on that, and promises to return tomorrow.)

Afterwards, Rhodey finds he has the urge to text Sam and apologize if his ears are burning. _Been talking about you to Tony, a little. Maybe we can avoid a full-on Cold War. Work on yours and I’ll work on mine._

It’s a let-down when Sam just sends him a thumb’s up emoji back, instead of a real response, but Rhodey doesn’t know why that should be true. He knows Sam’s busy, and might not have great cell service if they’re running with Nat to all her little nooks and crannies all over the map.

He makes it about two hours, almost through another full episode of _Supernanny,_ before he breaks and calls. In that time, Rhodey has managed to work himself up over everything from his growing tolerance to pain meds, to what they’re going to do if he’s read Peter’s crush on Tony all wrong (or the vindictiveness of it) and Peter gets offended or vengeful and leaks gossip about it to the press. And then there had been the hesitation when Tony went to go, like he wasn’t sure if they should kiss, or fist-bump, or what after the events of the shower.

This time, Sam answers on the second ring. “What’s up? I can talk.”

 _Oh, thank god._ “I don’t know for sure, but I maybe fucked something up,” he says.

There’s a long sigh down the line. Sam’s ‘counselor voice’ creeps in, with just the edge of resentment to it, as he asks Rhodey to explain.

 _No, wait. Back the hell up._ “I just wanna vent, you don’t have to fix it,” Rhodey clarifies. “Look, I don’t know if you guys have TV there, but the little box says Transformers is coming on after Supernanny-”

“On channel 9? I dunno what number it is here and it’s probably in goddamned-”

There’s a scuffling as it appears the phone is wrested away from Sam.

“-local language redacted,” says Natasha’s cool, almost GPS-like ‘super-spy’ voice. “Carry on, boys.”

“Anyway, I’ll try to find it,” says Sam, with a huge smile obvious even from just his voice. “If you wanna just vent and watch shit get blown up.”

Rhodey finds he has a matching smile of his own. “Okay.” Quickly, he taps out a text to Tony, asking him to let him know what happens with the kid, and then puts his phone to the side to enjoy a good, old-fashioned movie about alien robots.

He falls asleep before Tony texts him back, hours later, and before the nurses can come in to offer him more pain medication.

Rhodey sleeps through the night.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a year—and a change in presidents—before anything comes of Sam and Rhodey keeping in contact. Natasha is the first one to come home to roost, unsurprisingly; as state-of-the-art as the facility upstate may be, it was never going to be enough to keep her out.

What _is_ surprising, is that the reason she comes is for Tony’s birthday, at least ostensibly.

The new administration’s adherence to the Accords goes into effect on June 1st, which gives them a couple of weeks maybe, to smooth things out as best they can and get Steve, Barnes, Wanda, and the whole gang back stateside. Rhodey is glad that Sam talked Nat around, not that it took much talking.

“Grudges are for children,” is the first thing she says, wearing familiar all-black in the midst of Tony’s modern, white kitchen, sipping a mug of the tea that Rhodey knows he used to keep for her and never threw out.

“Amen,” Rhodey says back, and Tony looks at him hard, then at Sam at Nat’s side, then at Natasha herself.

“Fine. Barton’s not lurking in the vents is he? Still on house arrest?”

Rhodey smiles. A joke is as good as forgiveness, from Tony’s mouth.

“Yes,” Natasha answers neatly. Her hair’s different, lighter, but her body language is as opaque as ever and he can’t tell what she’s thinking or feeling.

Tony looks back at him one more time and Rhodey raises an eyebrow. “I can look into that for him, if you think it’s a good idea,” Tony finally offers to Nat, all but mumbling it.

“Please and thank you. Also, happy birthday.” With that, Natasha takes her tea and strides back down the long hall where there are a bunch of empty bedrooms, one for every Avenger. They don’t have nameplates or anything, but that’s what they are and Rhodey is sure that will become rapidly obvious to Nat, assuming of course that she hasn’t already cased the place before they got back from the birthday lunch in Albany ahead of tonight’s Manhattan bash.

Tony whirls on him. “Did you set this up?

He crosses his arms. “And so what if I did?” But then Rhodey relents and nods at Sam. “It was him, anyway.”

“Oh.” Tony pauses and the lines of his body straighten and smooth out. Rhodey grins at Sam over Tony’s shoulder. “Well, fine. I told you I went to Siberia as an ally, and I did. If you can get your idiots to come around, then I guess I can do the same.”

A smile blossoms on Sam’s face. “Did you just call yourself an idiot, in a roundabout kind of way? Because if so, happy birthday to _me_.”

“Shut. Up.”

“I don’t work for you,” Sam informs Tony, and Tony turns away from him to face Rhodey, and claps him on the shoulder.

“He’s yours to deal with then, honeybear. Have fun,” Tony tells him. And then he walks right out, presumably to go drink about Steve or something.

“Hear that, Rhodes? I’m _yours to deal with._ ”

They end up down in the lab, of all places. Rhodey has admin access and Tony’s party isn’t for hours yet, so he asks Sam, “You wanna get down and dirty? Hardware mode?”

“How down and how dirty?” is the only answer he gets, and then before Rhodey knows it, he’s sharing all his nerdy love for engineering with Sam, who is whip-smart but didn’t go to school for it like Tony and Rhodey did. It means something to him, to teach Sam about this.

Besides, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, not for Rhodey. He’s done this a thousand times with members of his team, before War Machine, back when the Air Force was still just buying weaponry wholesale from people like… well, people like Tony, and Justin Hammer. It had never sat right with Rhodey, asking these young men to go out and depend on technology that some of them—the ones not specially trained—barely understood.

“I learned a lot about this kind of thing when I trained for the wings,” Sam informs him. “But it was more general in some ways, and too specific in others. They really just cared if we could drop in and steer, shoot properly, that kind of thing. They didn’t go too far into the theory.”

Rhodey helps Sam get the angle right on a bladed piece of his wing that’s bent out of shape. “It’s a good thing you’re a natural then,” he says and Sam quirks a little smile at him.

Everything goes a little still, their hands over top of each other, working in and around that same metal… feather, for lack of a better word. Rhodey thinks about maybe kissing Sam, after all these months of over-the-phone movie nights and letting slip more details than either Nat or Tony would probably like.

He thinks about saying something corny like, _You deserve to know the theory, natural or not. You deserve everything, Wilson._

Of course, Tony picks that moment to come semi-drunkenly blustering into the lab, banging around as he tries to get poor Peter Parker in through the glass door ahead of him. He’s expounding loudly on the merits of nanotech.

The kid looks like a deer in headlights, taking in the lab like he’s never been here before although of course he has. Somewhat bitterly, Rhodey figures it must be down to him and Sam being there. Like many people, Peter probably figures Rhodey for more of a sidekick, not someone who has a similar education to Tony in engineering and physics, though not his much-lauded natural brilliance.

 _Then again, maybe there’s something to be said for effort over talent,_ Rhodey thinks, looking back at Sam and blinking. “We should go.”

“What, don’t _go_ , Rhodey, I just got here. I was gonna show Peter something I made for him. You can stay. It’s still my birthday and you missed my party, I insist.”

“It’s, uh,” Peter interrupts, “not actually still your birthday, sir.”

Sam, at Rhodey’s side, does a comically large double-take at his phone. Rhodey too is realizing they’ve been there for hours, working on the Falcon wings and on War Machine, playing with scrap. Rhodey looks at all the tools and things—the little foil airplanes and corkscrews cut out of beer cans—littered about. It hadn’t seemed like they’d been talking that long, but apparently six hours goes fast when you're having fun. 

There’s also the Peter problem, now that the kid has spoken. It doesn’t escape Rhodey’s attention that he’s sober and they’re all buzzed at the very least. It’s inappropriate. The kid’s aunt would have a fit. It's a small mercy that Peter doesn’t appear to have ingested alcohol—not that Rhodey can tell—but it's nearly as bad, just him being around it like this. 

Rhodey doesn't like the thought of Peter alone with Tony in the backseat of whatever driverless car they must have taken up here from the city, not for three hours. Not that Tony would hurt a child, not in a _million_ years.

Rhodey just has his doubts as to whether Tony—the same scrawny twerp who Rhodey knows to still be captive inside that overconfident persona Tony wears—can look at someone like Peter, who is as smart as him and who is also a hero, a kid who is the same age as Tony was when Howard turned him out on MIT's doorstep to go to college and be on his own and learn to build WMDs, a kid who is a fellow orphan, at that… Rhodey doesn't know if Tony can look at someone like that and actually _see_ a child. 

Slowly and carefully although also faster and more recklessly than he’d really prefer, as if parachuting down from a high altitude, Rhodey does the math. 

“Peter, I’m gonna take you home. I don’t know why Tony, in his _infinite wisdom_ , decided that inviting a fifteen-year-old to his very adult birthday party and then bringing him home—not _your_ home—was a good idea, but I’m sure your aunt would prefer you back in Queens by now. It’s gonna take a few hours, so we’re leaving now.”

Tony looks despondent but not like he’s about to argue. In fact, he looks like he’s gaining rapid clarity about the situation, which is good. The last time he and Tony went hand-to-hand was bad enough to last Rhodey a lifetime. 

“I’m almost sixteen,” Peter tries, but Rhodey’s not having it. “And actually I crashed the party. Or, Spider-Man did. I thought it would be good PR, ya know? Spider-Man and the Avengers, making nice…”

“Did you?” Rhodey asks. His voice is bone dry.

Peter is twisting his hands together, a surefire sign that he's nervous and that he knows he's wrong. Rhodey hasn't had much contact with day-to-day recruits in a long time, but he still knows what an anxious reaction to authority looks like. "Did we… make nice?" 

Rhodey ignores the double entendre, aware the kid probably didn't even think about it. "Did you think it would be good PR? Did you actually _think_ at all? Because you know they're probably gonna ask you to sign the Accords now, right?" 

Peter blinks. Tony crosses the lab to go to the non-sample fridge and get what Rhodey fervently hopes to be water.

"With your _signature_ ," Rhodey adds. "Your full name."

"Oh." If Peter looked anxious before, he looks more panicked now. His face is getting red, Rhodey notes with some satisfaction. It's not that he wants to torture him, but just that Peter needs to know his actions have consequences.

"Yeah," Sam puts in, and Rhodey turns from Peter to watch him and finds Sam is looking back and forth between Rhodey and Tony, who chugs water loudly and in much the same way he had upon returning from the desert. "Those Accords, gotta love 'em. No really, _gotta_ love 'em. Or else they'll put you on the Raft."

"Man, shut the hell up," Rhodey rags him for that, at the same time that Tony says, "Stop, you're not making him feel any better. Or me, there's also me."

"I'm not actually here to be responsible for how anyone feels, so," says Sam, dropping his head towards the lab counter and running his hand over top of it like he's just… tired. He probably is, considering how long they've been down here. Also, most of the beers had been Sam’s.

Rhodey would like nothing more than to leave Tony to clean up his own mess, and coax Sam into going up to bed.

(Maybe even Rhodey's own bed. That's a thought.)

"Mr. Stark? Am I really gonna have to uh…" comes Peter's voice, fluttery still around the edges with anxiety.

"Come out of the cape closet?" Tony supplies and Rhodey catches it when Sam's bowed shoulders shake with fatigued laughter. He shares a look with Tony. _He_ certainly knows what kind of entendre he's making.

Tony lifts his chin, and Rhodey snorts.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter says again.

"Rhodey's gonna take you home, like he said."

"But-"

"Go get in the car, Pete."

Peter does it obediently, ears red, but Rhodey is still thrown for a loop, because Tony doesn't _do_ that. He doesn't give people nicknames like that, or rather he _does_ all the time, but they're things like pop culture references or little snide side jokes. Tony never gives people nicknames based on their actual names unless he actually _likes_ them. Rhodey, Pep. Nat. Now, Pete.

It gets him thinking, and keeps him thinking, all the way back to the city.

With their car stuck in Manhattan traffic even at this time of night, Rhodey finally brings it up to Peter, who has until now remained sullen and silent, though outwardly civil. “Can I tell you something, Parker?”

“Sure… Colonel Rhodes.”

He grins. The politeness thing is endearing, he can admit. “The thing is, I know it’s not fair, but I’m gonna need you to punch above your weight class, maturity-level-wise. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Not really,” says Peter, as the light stays red.

Rhodey engages the driverless controls and turns in his seat to face Peter, whose face is all bathed in cherry glow. The kid looks like he _wants_ to understand, but Rhodey realizes suddenly that he has absolutely no idea what Tony said to him to get him to come to Germany in the first place, a year ago, or what he’s said to him since.

Maybe Peter just really wants to be acknowledged more than he wants to be an Avenger, if his reaction to the prospect of signing the Accords is anything to go by.

“We’re all he has, man. Just you and me.”

Peter’s jaw sets and Rhodey looks back at the road as he looks away. After a moment, Peter counts it out. “The Black Panther wasn’t really _with_ us, with us. Miss Natasha switched sides…”

“Vision has a conflict of interest,” Rhodey returns, following the train of thought. “Which is really saying something.”

“Miss Potts left,” Peter adds, “and Happy’s stress is out of control as it is.”

The light changes to green. “Exactly.”

They don’t speak again until they’re over the bridge but when they finally roll up to what the kid has indicated is his apartment building, in Forest Hills, Peter appears to find his voice. “I get it, you know? I’m not completely dumb.”

“No one thinks you-”

“No, listen,” Peter says, clearly frustrated. He unbuckles his seatbelt and straightens up in his seat. “I remember… I remember the hospital. I know that you two… Anyway. I care about him too.” 

Rhodey sees why Tony likes him. It probably strokes his ego to have that level of reverence turned on him, from someone that reminds him of himself. 

“I fight for him, too,” Peter continues, with eyes wide in a face that shows only guileless sincerity.

 _Jesus._ “That’s the thing, you shouldn’t be doing anything for _him._ Do it for you. The thing about Tony that I figured out about thirty years ago,” Rhodey starts to explain, blocking out the voice in his head that adds, _and about six months too late, six months behind Obadiah Stane,_ “is that all he really needs you to do is stay. Stick around. Act like he’s worth a damn.”

“I do!”

 _So indignant. Was I ever that young?_ he asks himself. Rhodey decides he wasn’t, because he wouldn’t have ever raised his voice like that to someone older than him. “You’re not hearing what I’m saying. No, listen. You don’t have to agree with him all the time. In fact, I have to say I would like it better if you didn’t. You don’t have to do what he says, and again, same deal. He has some real funny ideas about some things, Peter, and that’s on Mr. Stark senior, okay? It’s not on you. It doesn’t have to be your problem just because it’s his problem.”

Someone honks behind them; they’ve been sitting there in the parallel parking spot in front of Peter’s building with the hazards on for too long, apparently. Peter turns back to him, ignoring the sound. “Maybe,” he says slowly, “you should start taking your own advice, where Mr. Stark is concerned.” Peter bites his lip as Rhodey reels back from that proverbial slap in the face. “Sir.”

Rhodey grips the steering wheel. “Okay, I’m gonna let that slide, but this is the only time. _My point is:_ you gotta do what you gotta do, kid. Do what’s good for you, make good choices, give yourself what you need to stay in the superhero game long-term. That means not alienating your aunt by fucking off to a party, _with alcohol_ , in Manhattan. That means not trying to crash at the compound just because Tony’s thinking with his liver.” He pauses, unsure if he should say the next bit. “That means not trying to trap yourself into signing the Accords just because you think it’ll give him one over on Steve Rogers, or make Tony think of you as a peer.”

Peter blows out a breath and crosses his arms, looking out the window and up to what Rhodey would bet green money is the window of his aunt’s apartment. “Okay. Stick around. Take care of myself. Be good, be a kid. _Make good choices._ The same stuff every adult tells me. Got it.”

He goes to get out of the car but Rhodey hits the driver’s side door locks. Peter gives him an unimpressed look.

“Really?”

“Really. I know you think I’m just some old sidekick-type, right? But everything Tony ever did I did too, and I did it while black and a hell of a lot less rich, so maybe I know some things you don’t. Just… hold it together on your end, and I’ll hold him together on mine.”

Peter shakes his head. “You’re missing my point.”

“And you’re missing mine.” Rhodey tries not to grind his teeth, because the thing is: he’s not mad _at Parker._ He’s not. It’s not the kid’s fault. Rhodey tries for a somewhat gentler tone, even though it’s not really his style. He tries to throw Peter a bone. “He already likes you, kid.”

Peter lets go of the door handle. “Oh, he- I mean, I thought so, especially after the Vulture. But he does?”

“Yeah, he does, so all you have to do is not burn yourself out. And wait. Just don’t die, and don’t do anything to fuck it up, and age a little bit. The Avengers will hopefully still be there, waiting on you on the other side. He’ll throw you a party so big when they sign you on that it’ll make tonight look like a dinner party. That’s all I’m asking, man. Just _be patient._ ”

“Okay. I-” Peter takes a deep breath. He looks pleased, of all things. “Okay. I will.”

Rhodey tries not to worry about whether or not he believes him, all the way home.

***

Natasha meets him at the elevator.

“Do yourself a favor and trust me when I say Stark’s in bed. Don’t go check.”

She seems strangely tense, more guarded even than she had been earlier for all that she’s now in pure white, almost-demure sleep clothes. What bothers Rhodey about it is that if he’s seeing it, it’s either so bad that she can’t hide it—which is unlikely, but a daunting prospect—or she _wants_ him to see that she’s unsettled. Maybe it’s a kind of warning.

Either way, it’s bad news.

“And what about Sam?” Rhodey asks. “Did something happen?”

Too neutrally, Nat says, “He’s in the same boat.”

“What does that even mean?”

“He’s in the same… bed,” Natasha explains, and Rhodey’s mind goes a little blank. _What?_

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Rhodey jams the button for the elevator, intending to go right up to the top floor of the compound that comprises Tony’s personal living space and… and what? He doesn’t know what he does here. There’s no… win… for him here.

It’s already done.

The smart thing to do would be for him to mind his own business. But, damn it, maybe he’s tired of doing the smart thing. _Maybe you should start taking your own advice,_ Rhodey hears again, in Peter’s voice, _where Mr. Stark is concerned._

Natasha waits until the elevator comes to inform him that they’re not even in the penthouse. “Sam took him to his room.”

So, so gently, especially given that Rhodey knows how strong she is, Nat nudges him into the elevator.

“Go anyway. There’s nothing to be gained tonight. Go eat chips in his bed or something.”

Rhodey doesn’t do that, but he does pour himself a really generous, bougie nightcap from Tony’s bar, and settle in on the massive couch. He falls asleep like that, drunker than he meant to get, cold, and uncomfortable.

And also Angry.

**Author's Note:**

> A comment would be just lovely. I'm in a bit of a writer's block rut but the Starker Hallmark Christmas fic (which will now also be a Valentine's fic) should be the next to update after this one is done.


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